Up-level your business with the digital thread and digital twin (and what we can learn from a duck)

As a holistic framework, the digital thread connects across a product’s end-to-end life cycle, from the initial design to the final product—collecting live feedback along the way. Its insights and actions help companies speed up product time-to-market, reduce overall service spends, and stay flexible in meeting customers’ increasingly ever-changing demands for more personalized experiences.

The digital twin—enabled by the digital thread—is an electronic duplicate, or rather, a twin profile that keeps an evolving record of every part of the manufacturing process to help optimize business performance.

So, how can the digital twin help companies elevate their services?

As products are used by customers, the digital twin simulates this usage and calculates the maintenance—when critical components of a product may need to be replaced. Replacing a component before it breaks can significantly reduce the down time of high-performing products and increases customer product value. Fully utilizing digital twin technology across a digital enterprise can help manufacturers optimize and streamline predictive maintenance planning to stay ahead of the curve.

We could talk about the digital thread all day, but it would probably be more interesting if you learned from someone, well, cuter. Enter: Dub Dub. In our comic book, The Adventures of Dub Dub the Daring Disruptor Duck, Deloitte’s rubber ducky heroine helped to create a smart factory.

We’re now excited to announce the release of part two in the series, Dub Dub Cubed. In this edition, our favorite avian hero becomes a better version of herself by using the digital thread to determine which faulty components she needs to replace and service, and what new upgrades she can install to swim faster in the most challenging water conditions. Dub Dub comes to life in a smart studio, exploring three previously disconnected phases of a product’s development—design, manufacturing, and life—become more connected through the digital thread.

Curious to learn more? Download the Virtual Factory by Deloitte app to interact with Dub Dub and her Digital Twin, Ola, in a 3D smart factory featuring real-world use cases that demonstrate how technologies like the digital twin, IoT, and 3D printing are helping digital supply networks and smart factories transform via the power of the digital thread.

Connect with our PTC alliance at LiveWorx 2020 to hear from the creators of the Virtual Factory app.

What happens when the powerful forces of the digital thread and digital twin combine? You can streamline, design, adapt, and better maintain products at any stage of the journey using:

+ Real-time intelligence: Make more informed decisions about product design, performance, and value in the marketplace.

+ Supply chain transparency: Unlock supply chain transparency by linking all aspects of a product to a chain of custody to address variant product and manufacturing specifications.

+ More adaptable business models: Asses product performance in the marketplace and provide additional services beyond the current product; unlock upgrades and shift pricing according to real-time data and supply chain movements.

+ Connecting customers back to product design: As data is collected and products are built, customers can give feedback in real time, helping to reduce waste, carbon footprints, and over-production.

Want to learn more about PLM, MES, and the digital thread? Tune into our speaking sessions at Siemens Realize LIVE 2020. You can also learn more about the Deloitte Hybrid Cloud and view our live Factory AI and Hybrid Cloud demos at the virtual HPE Discover.